Asia

2010

New York, February 10, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists joins with its colleague in the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) in demanding an end to the impunity surrounding attacks on journalists in Nepal. The FNJ made the demands today in Kathmandu during a protest rally that came two days after the shooting death of Jamim Shah, the chairman of the Nepalese television station and satellite network Space Time Network.

Tags:

New York, February 9, 2010—An indictment in the Philippines of nearly 200 people in the November 23 killings of 57 people, including 32 journalists and media workers, is a welcome first step toward achieving justice in this terribly slaying, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. CPJ hopes that this signals a coming reversal in the country’s abysmal record of impunity.

Tags:

On
February 5, I blogged about three vicious bomb blasts in Pakistan in the
previous two days—“one in Lower Dir that wounded three reporters on Thursday,
and Friday’s double attack in Karachi that we’re still investigating.” I argued
that media companies in Pakistan
must start taking responsibility for protecting their employees in the field. I
had trouble rounding up names and numbers of those hurt in the second Karachi blast, at JinnahHospital, left, but the Pakistan Press Foundation
(PPF), which is based in Karachi,
has come up with a tally of 12 journalists
and media workers injured. PPF is a go-to organization for us, a place where
I always check in when I’m in Karachi.
If you’re a Pakistan
media watcher, it’s a fundamental, extremely reliable source to have bookmarked.

Tags:

A Chinese
dissident who writes about rights abuses is ending an involuntary exile in Japan
on Friday. Or so he hopes.

Feng Zhenghu has
booked a flight departing Japan’s
NaritaAirport
for Shanghai at
9:45 a.m. on February 12. That was the topic of an impromptu press conference
held Monday afternoon in the brightly lit lobby of the NipponPressCenterBuilding in central Tokyo.A small crowd of Chinese and Japanese journalists clustered round him
snapping photos while an anxious security guard paced up and down, interrupting
every now and then to ask the group to disperse.

Tags:

It was good to hear Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa
point out in his Independence
Day speech on Thursday that the country “cannot be developed with
harassment, gross punishments or by the gun.” But the sentence that followed
that—“Discipline is not revenge”—gives cause for concern. Rajapaksa’s speech
marked the 62nd anniversary of the country’s independence from Britain. It was
delivered in Kandy,
the heartland of the president’s electoral base.

Tags:

Google has gone quiet since its announcement
last month that it was unwilling to continue censoring search results on
Google.cn in China.
The
Washington Post reported Thursday that the company is seeking help from
the U.S.
government to trace hackers behind security breaches, which it said targeted
its own intellectual property and individual human rights activists. A Reuters analysis
said the company may also be grappling with the financial and legal
implications of ceasing censorship in defiance of Chinese law.

Regardless of Google’s next step or the motivations behind
it, the company’s January
12 statement has already had a positive effect: Journalists and human
rights activists who have long complained about e-mail security in relation to China
have a much wider audience for their concerns.

Tags:

Three vicious bomb blasts in Pakistan in the last two days—one in Lower Dir that wounded three reporters on Thursday, and Friday’s double attack in Karachi that we’re still investigating—highlight just how dangerous it has become for journalists, particularly TV camera crews and photographers, but certainly any journalist assigned to cover a public event or military operations in the country.

New York, February 1, 2010—The Burmese government should cease its campaign of intimidation and harassment against the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an exile-run television news provider, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Tags:

New York, January 29, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a jail sentence given to a Vietnamese journalist on charges that she spread anti-state propaganda and called today for her immediate release.